


Stargazing

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Post-Dominion War (Star Trek), Post-Episode: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), reference: s05 e01 Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-12-01 20:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20895113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: Home, only to be blindsided by a Starfleet that lost its way during the Dominion War, Kathryn Janeway seeks out the one person who can help her.





	Stargazing

**Author's Note:**

> A thank you for every star in the sky to cnroth for her thoughtful beta.

It was an old-style door with a knob and hinges. She was too short to see through the arched window in the wood, but its semicircle of light spilled past the front porch and onto the snowy front yard. 

Kathryn Janeway pulled off one glove. Her knuckles tapped once against the cold woodgrain of the door. The soft skin just below her eyes grew heavy and her chest constricted. 

This had been a terrible idea. 

Her legs weren’t obeying, though, so Kathryn stood as she heard footsteps approaching. After all these years, she still recognized the rhythm of his steps. 

The door opened.

Warm air spilled out.

Kathryn stuffed her ungloved hand in her coat pocket and looked away, as if not making eye contact meant he couldn’t see her either. 

But Mark pulled her in by her elbows and closed the door. 

Hooks on the wall held coats — two adult-sized, two very small. There were hats and boots in cubbyholes. The walls were yellow, cheerful, with stains from tiny fingerprints. Mark’s hand hovered like he wanted to brush the snow off Kathryn’s shoulders, but he didn’t. 

It had stopped snowing hours ago. 

“Come on.” Mark tugged at her wrist. “We can sit in my study.”

She shook her head and reached into her coat pocket. The Kazon, the Nyrians, the Hirogen. None of them ever realized the mirror above the sink in the captain’s quarters on _Voyager_ was a door — to a medicine cabinet. If they had swung the mirror open, they would have seen, among the cosmetics and bubble bath soaps, tucked behind the dermal regenerator and to the left of the hair color wand, the small box Kathryn now held in her palm. She stared at the floor and waited for Mark to take the box that held the engagement ring he had given her, and, in doing so, let her go. 

Instead, Mark shouted behind them to some point — some person — deeper in the light-filled home. 

“Carla, I’ve got to go out for a bit. I’ll be back.”

In one motion, he grabbed the biggest coat, hat, and pair of boots. His other hand opened the front door and he pushed Kathryn back out with his elbow. Mark put on his warm clothes outside, jumping a little each time he tugged on a boot. She stuffed the box back into her coat pocket. The corner bit into her thigh.

“Meadows?” he asked. 

She nodded, her eyes on the snowy front yard. 

Kathryn slipped her other glove back on and pulled her hat down to her eyebrows. As they stepped along the heated sidewalk, past white-blanketed homes and trees cracking with the weight of snow, Mark asked questions she didn’t answer out loud.

“Is it two weeks now you’ve been back?”

_Two weeks and three days. They ripped my crew apart, Mark, separated us into Starfleet, Maquis, and “other.” Tom is “other” and B’Elanna is Maquis. Only one was allowed to take the baby. _

“I heard you’ve been staying with your mother?”

_I stare at the ceiling of a room that was mine a lifetime ago and it’s wrong. Only Starfleet personnel have been allowed to see their families. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can file appeals on behalf of the Maquis, but Starfleet won’t recognize me as their commanding officer. I’ve gone to the prison to see Chakotay, but he won’t talk to me. It’s in New Zealand, Mark, how’s that for irony?_

“Have you been spending a lot of time in San Francisco?”

_When I close my eyes, I see the grey walls of the briefing room at headquarters. I’ve barely felt the sun. The admirals aren’t mad about the things that should bother them. All they want are assurances the Maquis crew members won’t use their knowledge of Starfleet to mount some sort of attack. I ask for what purpose and no one will tell me._

They arrived at The Meadows, the school they had attended as children. Kathryn put a gloved hand to the side of the building and rested her hatted forehead against the frozen bricks.

“You were such a skinny kid,” she murmured. 

“Yeah, so were you,” Mark replied gently. “All tennis and quantum physics and attitude.”

Her chortle lived for a moment. Then her throat burned. Her shoulders began to shake. A teardrop fell and made a dark circle on the sidewalk. There was another circle, then new circles formed not-quite atop the old ones.

Mark hesitated, then touched her shoulder. Kathryn turned and stepped into his embrace. His warmth was borrowed and she knew it. Still, she clung to him, the freezing air attacking her lungs as she gulped and gasped, her wet cheeks and eyes burning from cold. 

Mark had never been a shusher. When she cried, he’d always let her get it out. That, at least, hadn’t changed. 

“He — he had these fat fingers,” she choked into Mark’s coat. 

“Who had the fat fingers, Kath?”

“The lieutenant. When … when they finally let us off — off the ship, Starfleet let us … let us take one standard duffel bag each. The lieutenant with fat fingers, he —” 

Kathryn couldn’t keep telling the story, couldn’t tell Mark how the dour-faced, yellow-turtlenecked lieutenant had aimed a tricorder into her bag, shifting items from one side to the other with his fat fingers. She had snapped at him, asked what the hell he was looking for. The lieutenant had ignored her. As he dug toward the bottom of the bag, one of her bras had tumbled out and drifted onto the floor. 

The bra was her last one from the Alpha Quadrant, a pink lace thing she had never actually worn on _Voyager_. Every time she saw it in her drawer, though, the wisp of material had been a piece of home. 

When the lieutenant shoved her still-unzipped duffel back at her, Kathryn had slung the bag over her shoulder and walked away. 

“Kath,” Mark said. “We’re going to freeze if we don’t move. Do you want to walk or do you want to go inside somewhere?”

She wanted to be here, at The Meadows. When she and Mark were dating and when they were engaged, they would come to the school in the evenings and lay against the big hill, the grass tickling their necks. The school was in the center of an area where artificial lights were prohibited at night, and the stars, the moon, and the ships in orbit seemed so close. Mark used to ask Kathryn which one she wanted and he would pretend to pluck it from the sky and hand it to her. She had loved that. 

“C’mon.” Mark pulled Kathryn toward the school. They crunched through snow that came up to her calves. Her boots only reached her ankles and the wet cold helped Kathryn remember herself, straighten up, stop crying. 

Mark tugged at each window until he found one that wasn’t locked. He pushed it open, kneeled, and laced his fingers, palms up. He looked at Kathryn expectantly. 

“You’re not serious.” She crossed her arms. 

His grin was a punch to her gut. “There’s the Kath I know,” he said. “Good to see you. Climb in or give me a better idea.”

She climbed in. 

Mark hoisted himself after her and shut the window. He stomped the snow off his boots and pants, then rubbed her hands with his. The feeling came back into her fingertips, stinging at first. The classroom wasn’t as warm as Mark’s home had been, but it was above freezing. 

“How long were you outside?” Mark asked. 

Kathryn shrugged. 

The darkened room had clusters of child-size desks and chairs. There was a larger desk in the center of the room for the teacher. In a corner was a reading area with a small sofa. Mark led Kathryn there, cursing when he accidentally kicked a book. His chest went to the floor as he fished under the sofa for it. 

“Are you … going to send your kids here?” she asked. 

“When they’re old enough,” he grunted, retrieving the book and laying it on a nearby desk. 

She nodded. It was a good school. Or, it had been. Maybe it still was. She sat on the sofa.

“Hang on,” Mark said. 

He made his way to the teacher’s desk. On it was an old-style, audio-only communication device. Kathryn watched Mark hook on the earpiece, then tap the interface. She pulled off her gloves and cupped her mouth and nose in her hands. Her nose flared with pain as it thawed.

“Hey, it’s me,” Mark spoke into the device. “I’m going to be gone a while longer… Yeah, it’s her… Okay, I’ll do that… Thanks.” He tapped the device a few more times. “Hi, Gretchen, it’s Mark. She’s with me…. What? … Yes, I’ll tell her.”

He unhooked the earpiece.

The sofa dipped as Mark sat next to her.

“According to your mother, eight hours ago you walked out in the middle of a briefing and no one has seen you since. Your commbadge was found on a civilian transport looping San Francisco. Want to talk about it?”

By the light from the stars, Kathryn could just see how the thin lines around his eyes had deepened. His cheeks were a bit more full and his mouth, the lips she had kissed hundreds of times, was a line — flat and, frankly, unappealing. She was grateful for that. Finding him had been somewhere between instinct and need and she didn’t want her mind scrambled any more than it already was. 

“No,” she shook her head. “I just … I just need a friend, okay? Please,” she reached into her pocket again and took out the box, “take this and be my friend.”

Their fingers brushed, the box disappeared into his coat pocket, and Kathryn sagged into the sofa. 

She listened to his breathing. One breath to her every two. His mind was quick, but his body was calm and she had loved that about him. 

“What’s it like,” she said, “not being in Starfleet?”

“It’s what I know,” he replied. “I go to work, I spend time with my family, I indulge in my hobbies when I have time.”

“But what’s it _like_?”

“It’s good.” Mark smiled. “When you went missing, I was in communication with Starfleet all the time. There was a lot of data, a lot of people attacking a problem from different vantage points. The cooperation was effective in theory, but it got tiring. I arranged for a private investigation into your ship’s disappearance and got answers it took Starfleet another three months to tell me.”

“Maybe Starfleet knew but the information needed to be declassified.” 

“Maybe.” 

Through the classroom window, she watched a ship. From the flight path and the way it twinkled through the atmosphere, Kathryn guessed it was Galaxy class. Likely due at Utopia Planetia for a refit. Her fingers went to her temples. 

“What,” she said, “was it like during the Dominion War?”

Mark raked his fingers through his grey hair. “Oh, God, Kath. It was bad. Really bad. It felt like every casualty list had the name of someone you’d mentioned to me, someone you’d served with or known.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “Out there, in the Delta Quadrant, we knew something was happening back home. But this ...” she gestured weakly as if to encompass the attack on Starfleet headquarters, the billions of deaths, the two quadrants of destruction. “We had no idea.”

“I know,” he said. 

She realized Starfleet must have given instructions or censored letters from home. Kathryn wanted to be angry, to have fire in her belly, to stomp and sputter and spit the words of the righteous. Instead, she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. 

The admiralty had been openly impressed by her trades of Alpha Quadrant technology for Delta Quadrant protection. Then came the suspicion. Why had she granted full access to _Voyager’s_ systems to enemies of the Federation? Did she think the Maquis would regroup and attack Federation interests? Did she know imprisoned Maquis in the Alpha Quadrant had communicated with officers on her ship? When Kathryn pointed out the communication was only possible due to the efforts of Starfleet Command, she was told trust was impossible to gauge without testing. 

Headquarters had gone through her logs and had a charge of mutiny ready to level at Seven of Nine for … well, for a lot of things. 

“But she’s not even a Starfleet officer,” Kathryn had protested. 

She was told to focus her efforts on crew she had been assigned, not crew she had taken on. Yet when Kathryn fought for the Doctor’s right to self-determination, she had been chided not to confuse technology and personnel. The admirals had been smug, sure that seven years away had inured Kathryn to loss.

Were they right?

“Kath.” Mark put his hand on her knee. “They need you.”

Ah, there was her anger. 

“Who the hell needs me?” she snapped. “The crew I fought to get home for seven years only for a quarter of them to be treated like criminals? The admirals who block or undermine me? The family that looks at me with expectations I can’t possibly meet?”

There it was again. One breath to her every two.

Mark reached into his pocket.

One breath to her every two.

He did what Kathryn hadn’t done for more than three years — he opened the box. It was too dark to see the sapphire ring, but they both knew what it looked like, how she would slip it on as soon as she was off duty.

One breath to her every two. 

The open box sat on his knee closer to her.

One breath to her every two. 

Gingerly, she extended her hand.

She touched the ring, a whisper of a fingertip on cut stone. 

“Remember ..” Kathryn swallowed, “... remember what you said?”

“It’s still true.” Mark’s eye lines deepened. “No matter where you go, I’ll always be here. Not in the same way, but —”

“Mark, I need to go somewhere.” She pulled her hand away from the ring. “I need to get off this planet. Be by myself. What sector was least touched by the Dominion War?”

He answered her question, and the many that followed. He let her plan a whole life away from Starfleet and her responsibilities. When she sat back, satisfied, he asked a question of his own.

“Did you do this out there?”

Kathryn’s vision clouded. The dark room became even darker, the sky empty. She saw a yellowish-brown alien, a Malon, his skin scarred from theta radiation exposure. The Malon smelled of decay — organic and inorganic — and his sneer made her fingers twitch for a phaser.

“Once,” she whispered. “I did it once out there.”

_“Give me the creature and I'll take you to the vortex,” the Malon said. _

“What was the plan?” Mark‘s voice was real. The alien was just a memory-ghost from three years earlier. 

_“Are you at war with these beings?” Kathryn asked the Malon. _

_“None of your concern,” the Malon replied. _

“Get off the ship,” she told Mark. “Class two shuttle, photon torpedoes, rations. That was the plan.”

“That’s a pretty bad plan,” he said. 

_“We're not going to let you die out here,” B’Elanna protested._

_“I can't follow that order, ma'am,” Tom said. _

“My senior staff agreed.” 

“So,” Mark snapped the box closed and returned it to his pocket, “what are you going to do now?”

Her vision cleared. The stars and ships and satellites in Earth’s orbit twinkled by. Mark’s one breath to her every two was steady beside her. 

He had indulged her wishes. 

Kathryn looked him in the eyes as she reclaimed her realities. 

“I’m going to headquarters tomorrow morning to tell them they can either release my people — all my people — or I’ll resign my commission and take my story to the media. Either way, I’m going to be the biggest gadfly in the history of the Federation. Starfleet has lost itself and I know a thing or two about finding a way home.”

She stood.

Mark rose, too. “You’re going to win, Kath. I know you will.”

She wanted to jut her chin, hitch her hands on her hips, and stride off to victory. But she knew that wasn’t how this would work. 

What she had to do was let Mark walk her home so mother could fuss over her with hugs and soup. She had to let the admirals exhaust themselves with arguments until she secured official apologies for every one of her crewmembers. She had to let bars be pinned to her collar while she plotted to transform the promotion that was supposed to placate her into a weapon to expose the paranoid and imperious forces within Starfleet. She had to let her crusade gain momentum, officer by officer, until Starfleet became what it once was, what it was supposed to be.

So she did.


End file.
